Gardasil & The Sexual Double Standard

There is so much screwed up about the Gardasil vaccine that it's hard to know where to begin.

Gardasil is a classic example of a drug developed by a rapacious, politically savvy pharmaceutical company in need of a big moneymaker.

Mind you the human papillomavirus (HPV) is nothing to sniff at and Gardasil appears to dramatically reduce the chances of getting it.

One in four U.S. women ages 14 to 59 is infected with this most common of sexually transmitted viruses, which can can cause genital warts and in some forms deadly cervical cancer, while nearly 45 percent of the infected population are middle school-aged girls.

But when Merck & Co. introduced Gardasil in 2006, boys were not on the map although they often spread HPV and also can suffer from genital warts as well as cancers of the penis, anus, mouth and throat.

It was the potential goldmine that middle-school girls represented that prompted Merck to target their parents through an aggressive lobbying and marketing campaign that resulted in some mandatory vaccination programs and a ferocious backlash from religious groups and others concerned that being vaccinated would provide a false sense of security and send the message that having sex was okay.

Today only Virginia and the District of Columbia require vaccinations.

But now that Merck is trying to get approval for boys to also get the shots (use for women 27 and older still has not been approved), the debate has shifted and all too predictably brought to the fore the double standard of how the sexes are treated when it comes to views of promiscuity and health care.

While the raging question three years ago was whether Gardasil would make young girls more likely to have sex, now it is whether Gardasil is worth the money (at about $500 for a three-shot course) and is safe and effective enough.

Ahem.